New Delhi, Aug. 25 -- Overcrowded prisons or the burden of pendency cannot be reasons for releasing convicts in serious cases on bail, the Supreme Court has emphasised, cautioning judges against adopting a "callous or casual approach" while deciding bail applications. The top court maintained that the burden of judicial pendency was one that judges were bound to carry and deal with, and could not result in bail being granted where the offence was serious, the accused posed a threat and there was fear among victims, their families or society at large. A bench of justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran made the observations while imposing stringent conditions on the bail granted to three convicts - Tabish, Rashid and Tariq - in a 2017 double murder case in Uttar Pradesh. The bench expressed its dismay at an order of the Allahabad high court, which had released the convicts on bail primarily because of the large number of criminal appeals pending before it. "We were appalled by the impugned order... since the accused in a double murder case were casually released on bail," said the bench in its order last week. In its December 2025 order, the high court had recorded that more than 100 criminal appeals were being listed every day and that it was "not humanly possible" to decide all of them on merits. It had concluded that there was a remote possibility of the appeal being heard in the near future and, on that basis, granted bail. The Supreme Court said that while constitutional courts were often confronted with a large number of bail applications, they could not dispose of them without considering the circumstances of each case. "There should be some plausible reason shown justifying the nature of the disposal of the bail application," it emphasised. The top court also drew a distinction between cases where refusal of bail merely on the seriousness of an alleged offence could result in prolonged pre-trial detention and cases involving convicted persons facing serious charges. "Neither overcrowded prisons nor the burden of pendency; which we judges are bound to carry and deal with, shall result in bail being granted, when the offence is serious, the offender is virulent and there is fear in the minds of the victims or their families or the society at large," it said....